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Then out of a tense moment of suppressed confusion he had heard his wife's voice floating toward him as she said: "Ah, then you were not drowned, after all!" With amazing effrontery he threw open the door and pressed down the emergency seat opposite her. "No... I swam out of that black pool!" A slight tremor ran through her. Mrs. Hilmer smiled.
And, besides, I'll meet lots of nice people." Well, she had met a lot of nice people, but the only fruitful yield socially had been Mrs. Hilmer. And somehow it never occurred to Helen to apply such a discriminating term as nice to her latest acquisition. Mrs. Hilmer was wholesome and good hearted and a dear, and no doubt she was nice in a negative way, but one never thought about saying so.
"For a butcher?" Helen countered, with pained incredulity. "How long does your husband work?" Hilmer went on, calmly. "I'm sure I don't know. How long do you work, Fred?" Starratt hesitated. "Let me see ... nine to twelve is three hours ... one to five is four hours seven in all." Hilmer smiled with cryptic irritation. "There you have it!... What's wrong with a butcher wanting eight hours?"
He turned toward Hilmer with an indifferent comment on the weather and the talk veered to inconsequential subjects. Helen continued her scrutiny of the forms. Finally Hilmer rose to go. Helen made no move to return the memoranda. Fred cleared his throat and even coughed significantly, but Helen was oblivious.
But either indecision or a veiled purpose made her assume indifference, and Ginger's progress was registered in a short sentence at the end of a brief scrawl which said: To-day I took a book out and read to Mrs. Hilmer for an hour in the sunshine. And later another statement forwarded this curious drama with pregnant swiftness: Yesterday, I told Mrs. Hilmer about you.
She had left none. Thus dismissed, he turned his steps toward the Hilmers'. He had expected to come upon the vision of his wife wheeling Mrs. Hilmer up and down the sidewalk, and yet, when these expectations were realized, he experienced a shock. There she was, Helen Starratt, in a black dress and a black hat, pacing with drab patience the full length of the block and back again.
Recalling the scene, he remembered how outwardly commonplace were the moments which followed. Even Hilmer had been surprised into banalities. Fred Starratt might have parted with them but yesterday, for any indications to the contrary, and for an instant he had found all sense of tragedy swallowed up in amazement at the passive tenacity of the conventions.
Helen stopped her typing. Fred could feel his lips drying with mingled anticipation and apprehension. He knew just what demand Hilmer intended making. "The question is," Hilmer continued, "how much of the commission are you going to split up with me?" Fred shrugged. "You know the rules of the Broker's Exchange as well as I do, Hilmer. I've pledged myself not to do any rebating."
He could not disentangle the mixed impulses which had sent him upon this irrational errand, but he remembered now that a consuming desire to see Hilmer had possessed him.
Indeed, he grew so dull that Helen Starratt, stifling a yawn, said: "If it's not too personal ... won't you please tell us ... about ... about the man you killed for smashing your thumb?" He laughed with charming naivete, and began at once. But it was all disappointingly simple. It had happened aboard ship. A hulking Finn, one of the crew's bullies, had accused Hilmer of stealing his tobacco.
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